The Ham

A sunset looms over a Black household located in the middle of nowhere, constant bickering back and forth between elderly and the young runs on. All shot in long, impressive one takes, Fat Ham is a love letter to Shakespeare that provides plenty of representation for Black and queer communities that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a really great and unique adaptation of Hamlet that I feel is worth checking out. So let’s dive into its strong points and weaknesses, shall we?

So what even is a Fat Ham!? Fat Ham is a critically acclaimed award winning stage play written by James Ijames that takes place at a modern southern barbecue. From the moment the film starts, I could tell that this wasn’t a typical reimagining of Shakespeare. Juicy (this play’s version of Hamlet), a young gay Black man is confronted by his recently deceased Pap (this play’s version of King Hamlet) in the backyard and he demands that Juicy should avenge his murder. The synopsis retains that Hamlet-iness for sure, but the scene is absolutely different. Juicy and Tio (Horatio) are dressed in very modern clothing. Sweatpants, camouflage hoodies, caps, sneakers, and long sleeve tees. Now, the reason the play is named Fat Ham? Because Juicy is “thicc.” Yeah, pretty interesting to say the least. The rest of the play isn’t worth describing, as it would take up too much text, so I’ll just skip to where the play succeeded and where it fell flat.

First of all, the acting was fantastic. Every single character was absolutely juicy (no pun intended) with emotion. Some of the best dramatic acting I’ve seen, they somehow manage to be loud in the funniest way and have very meaningful quiet scenes as well. The most mind-boggling thing to me though, was the fact that the whole entire film was done in one seamless take. I never noticed a single cut at all. It almost felt like I was in the film. Juicy even talks to the camera on occasion, so it immersed me even more. And I only noticed one mistake in the entire movie. One. Single. Mistake. And it was just Juicy messing up a word and having to resay that word. When I realized this was all in one shot, it completely changed how I thought of the movie. Everyone was great, well, except for one actor who I thought fell flat throughout the entire film… Juicy, the main character himself. Everyone has a very southern accent besides him, and in almost every scene it sounds like he’s only trying a little bit to act. He either talks normally or talks with this kind of “in awe” sounding voice, and it just makes the scene a little awkward. Perhaps it's meant to be seen as how he doesn’t totally fit in with everyone, but in my opinion it just makes the scene awkward, like he’s barely trying.

Another aspect where the film absolutely exceeds in is the representation of the Black and LGBTQ+ community. At some point in the film, Juicy mentions that as a child he wanted a Barbie doll and his mother gifted it to him, the doll being Black and a display of traditional femininity. Juicy was completely enamored with the doll. But his Pap wasn’t so amused, in fact he hated it so much that he destroyed it. He only wants Juicy to display masculine traits rather than any feminine traits. We also see how Larry (Laertes) suppresses his sexuality and beliefs just to seek approval from his family. They want him to be a marine, but he wants to be a performer. Juicy spills the beans about his sexuality, leading to a big fight that causes him to rush inside. And when everyone eventually settles down at the end of the movie, he comes out clad in a sparkly silver dress and a long pink wig. The family eventually fully supports him because it makes him feel happy.

This film was more impactful than I expected it to be, and I totally recommend that anyone should get the chance to watch it! It’s definitely better to understand the source material first, though, as Hamlet references are littered throughout. Juicy is a big Shakespeare nerd, and once Rev finally dies, Juicy brings up the idea of everyone killing each other because "the story is supposed to be a tragedy.” Everyone grabs a random item, and on the count of three…they just kinda screamed and wiggled around because they didn’t know what to do, and eventually decided that it wasn’t worth killing each other just because of Shakespeare. As I just said, Shakespeare references are littered everywhere, so I recommend you catch them yourself. If I named them all then this would be 6 pages longer. So yeah! Fat Ham! He’s fat and he’s Ham! Go watch it.

Lead photo courtesy of Wilma Theatre.

The TeenTix Press Corps promotes critical thinking, communication, and information literacy through criticism and journalism practice for teens. For more information about the Press Corps program see HERE.

This review was written as part of an Arts Criticism unit at Evergreen High School in Emily Acquino’s Language Arts classes. Press Corps residencies are made possible by a grant from 4Culture.